


Mutiny

by 2x2verse (agent_florida)



Series: droneverse [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aftercare, BDSM, BDSM Scene, Bathing/Washing, Blow Jobs, Come Inflation, Dom Drop, Dom/sub, Double Penetration, Double Penetration in One Hole, Exhaustion, Foursome - M/M/M/M, M/M, Multi, Riding Crops, Safeword Use, Stripping, Threesome - M/M/M, Top Drop, Topping from the Bottom, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 14:16:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6523522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_florida/pseuds/2x2verse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I can’t answer for the other two, that’s not how our relationship works—but if they do, and now I kind of hope they will, I am <em>really</em> going to like showing off my boys.” The sharpness of John’s grin could cut diamonds.</p><p>Well, at least John doesn’t sound like too much of a sick fuck. And if you turn out anything like him, maybe you’re redeemable after all.</p><p>--</p><p>Commission from manicpixiedreamdragon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mutiny

“But—that’s—how did—when you—”

“Calm down there, sparky,” Dave tells you, and grabs your other hand to fix your claw polish.

That’s a normal thing that guys do, right? Fix each other’s nail polish and bitch about their sex lives? Normal enough for you and Dave, at least. He’s taught you how to wing your eyeliner just right, but no matter how many times he goes over this, you still can’t get polish on your dominant hand.

While Dave dabs lacquer on your claws, you chew at the inside of your cheek. You have so many questions, and a good ninety percent of them are too inappropriate to voice. Even to Dave. “You don’t have to _stop_ talking,” Dave grumbles, then blows on your claw.

“I don’t know where to start,” you point out. It’s a lot to wrap your pan around. The bases of your horns are tingling just thinking about it. And even though Dave’s only been sensitized to (frankly) mutant hormonal displays, he’s going to catch on pretty soon that this isn’t just a polite sort of conversation. “The three of you—you really—”

“Sometimes.” Dave shrugs. His expression is neutral, eyes hidden behind his shades. “Or just two of us. Hell, I still go on dates with Rosie and her sisters sometimes.”

“Your broodmate?”

You don’t have to be able to see Dave’s eyes to be able to tell he’s rolling them at you. “Human euphemism for masturbation.”

“Shut up.” You totally knew that. You turn your head in a huff, and when you reflexively go to push your glasses up the bridge of your nose, you nearly smear your polish. And it’s so close to setting properly this time. “And Kar—Kar’s okay with it?”

“Ampora. Seriously. Do we have to go over this again?” He tugs at your littlest prong a little too hard to get it into proper painting position. “We’re all cool. We’re all fine. Except for when people ask dumbshit questions.”

“I’m askin’ dumbshit questions.”

“I never said that.” Dave splays your fingers apart when he lays your hand back down on your knee so your claws can dry. “You’re just a dumbshit kinda troll sometimes.” The polish brush squeaks as he screws it back onto the bottle.

You can’t figure out what’s making your vascular flop around like a dying fish in your thoracic cavity. Could be any number of stunning revelations you just received from one David Benjamin Strider. Maybe it’s thinking about the matesprit who got away, sandwiched between two human bodies and treated like the prince he’s always been. Maybe it’s trying to envision the steely resolve of the young man in front of you melted down until he’s nothing but a submissive puddle of need.

More likely—and this is what makes your food blender shrivel and curl up like it wants to die in your gutcradle—it’s that unfathomable chain of command that runs through the three of them, and how John put himself at the top of the hierarchy commanding the two strongest people you know.

You don’t know much about John Egbert, really. What you do know is delightfully vague. He’s been Dave’s best friend since time immemorial, but Dave won’t tell you how that turned into… this. Karkat’s had his concupiscent quadrants set aside for the idiot since the moment he first trolled him. John’s always _there_ at gatherings, but not in a way where you obviously notice his presence; he doesn’t grasp for attention or show off or much of anything, really, just smiles and makes dumb jokes and actually listens to what other people have to say. He’s so milquetoast bland tasteless that if you weren’t keeping an eye on him in particular, he’d just slide right off your radar.

And this is the guy who, at a word, could have Dave and Kar on their knees and willing to serve.

You have to know more.

“I wanna talk to John,” you blurt out, more forcefully than you mean to. Wow, Eri, way to keep it casual. Your thumb finds a ring on your forefinger, starts spinning it idly.

Dave smirks. Audibly. “Don’t trust him?”

“It’s not that,” you spit out defensively. It’s not until you reach up to (playfully!) shove at Dave that you realize how much _bigger_ you are than him, your paw dwarfing the cup of his shoulder.

He intercepts your hand before it lands, though, and double-checks your prongtips for varnish. “Don’t get it?”

“Shore.” Dave’s testing touch leaves nearly imperceptible fingerprint sworls in your clear coat. You always ask him to do it because he makes you look _lethal_. “I just… wanna know what that feels like.”

There’s no teasing about that. Dave knows how much it stings, salt in your wounds. It hardly seems fair, that some people could have an overabundance and others could be bereft of comfort. Not that you deserve any. You’re heinous, who could pity you? No one could love you. And that’s discounting any intimacy—you’re too disgusting to touch, too selfish to be allowed control, too eager to be granted affection.

Dave takes your other hand, too. You didn’t realize they were shaking. His grip is vice-hot. “Sorry,” you tell him, like he’s squeezing a confession out of you. “I didn’t mean—”

“Hey.” At first, when Dave reaches up, you’re terrified that you’ve actually started crying this time, that he’s going to wipe a tear from your cheek—but no, he just rights your glasses. “I know, man. Ain’t easy, figuring out this shit. If talking to Egbert will help—go ahead, I guess, but he’s a huge fucking dork, so good luck.”

“Oh.” Dave has a way of making your fears seem unfounded. You wish he were around all the time to tell your worries to fuck right the fuck off, or however he would word it. “So I can just… talk to him? About it?”

“You don’t need to ask my permission to talk to my boyfriend, jesus.”

“I know, but—I mean, he’d—?”

“Yeah, you don’t need luck,” Dave muses, “you’re enough of a dork on your own.”

“Wow, fuck you too.” Of course, when you reach up to noogie him, his hair gets stuck in your varnish, which means you have to start this hand all over again.

\--

“So, Dave says you want to talk to me but you’re too shy to message me.”

The genial voice comes from maybe a foot behind your left shoulder while you’re trying to put sugar in your latte at Starbucks. Which means you startle and spill coffee all over the counter in your haste to form a fist to punch this guy in the face. “Cod, what the shell is wrong with—”

“Hey, whoa, Eridan, it’s me. John.” And when you wheel around, fist cocked, sure enough, there he is. Even though you were about to break the bridge of his glasses, he still has a doofy grin on his face. “I didn’t mean to startle you! Jeez.” As you lower your fist, he looks over your shoulder to the mess you made. You didn’t realize how tall this human was—you’re only taller than him because your horns help you cheat. “Um… how about I buy you a replacement, and then we can just… sit down. And talk.”

Which is how you end up sitting across a sticky, small, rickety table from John coddamn Egbert, fiddling with your rings while you try to figure out what to say that’s also appropriate for public discourse. “Sorry for flippin’ out.”

“Nah, it’s okay, I snuck up on you. It happens.” John takes a sip of his drink, nonchalant as could be. “So, why do you want to talk to me? Is it the whole love triangle thing?”

You stare at the lid to your pumpkin spice latte. “Not exactly,” you say eventually.

“So it _is_ sort of about the two boyfriends thing. I knew it.” Another sip. John’s got a mini foam ‘stache on his lip. He’s going to catch you watching if he licks it away. “Sorry, I kind of showed up late to that particular party. Dave and Karkat had been dating for, gosh, I don’t even remember now, and I kind of stumbled face-first into it after Karkat moved in. So if you’re wondering what it was like to date both of them, separately, and then be in a triad? You probably should have asked Dave.”

“Wait, so you…” You might need to set aside a few napkins in case you need to draw some diagrams. “You were the third wheel, and now—now you’re in charge?”

John shrugs. “I guess? Not for everyday stuff. We all have jobs and stuff, and we all do chores, and we all pull our own weight, but it’s totally different behind closed doors and all that.”

“That part.” You hide your bluster in a sip of latte. It doesn’t go down as easily as you were hoping. You hope your gills aren’t leaking. “That’s the part I w-wanted to ask about.” Now? Your warble has to come out _now_?

“Oh.” John takes another sip of coffee. Another. “We probably shouldn’t talk about that here.”

“I know.” Do you ever. Your face has to be broke out in violet freckles by now.

John’s hands aren’t even shaking. Not with the caffeine, not from nerves, not from anything. “So, um. Do you want to see where I work, or where I live?”

That’s your cue. You push away from the table so you can stand. It feels good to be unequivocally taller than John. “We can talk at my place.” That way, you can keep some semblance of advantage in the conversation, being on familiar territory. And if his coffee runs out, you can make him tea or something.

“Sure,” is all John says, following you to the transportalizer.

A short trip later, and now instead of a small, rickety, sticky table in a public place, you’re across from him with your forearms on a small, rickety table in your kitchen. (At least it’s not sticky.) “I’m sorry, I really meant to message you, but I nev-ver knew-w—” Calm down, Ampora. “Never knew what to say, or how to say it.”

“Jeez.” John’s not making fun of you, though. His smile would be different, you think. This one reaches his eyes, a sympathetic twinkle shining. “Is this something booze could fix?”

“Probably not, I just need to stop bein’ such a fuckin’ w-wriggler.” And stop the stuttering, too. Speech impediments aren’t cute. “I guess I just w-want to know-w how-w you—how you got Kar and Dave to behave.”

“So, like. The whole dom thing?” To hide your inability to talk, you nod and hide your mouth with your drink. John chuckles, at least. “They really are a handful, aren’t they? I think they just know by now that they need to listen to me.”

“But they’re so…” How do you phrase this. “They’re not… weak. Or submissive.”

“Agree to disagree?” That pulls a smile out of you. “You’re on to something, though. It’s… a bedroom kind of thing. And just because they go along with my lead then, I mean, that doesn’t mean we always do things like that. Or that I think of them as inferior or anything.”

“But, but you.” Words are jumbling in your pan, and you’re trying to pick out a sentence that makes sense. “The three of you, and you’re at the top ‘a the chain ‘a command? Forgive me for bein’ a little fuckin’ skeptical.”

“It can’t be that weird—is it?” You stare him down; he looks away first. “Wow. I never really think of it that way. I was just kind of the de facto leader of our session, and Dave is kind of a follower.”

“Kar was our session leader,” you point out, “and somehow he’s bendin’ his knee to you.” Is this some human shenanigans you don’t have a hope of understanding? Or is this something about Kar that you missed?

“Do you really think Karkat would go belly-up just like that?” John has a point. “He’s my co-pilot sometimes, or sometimes I boss him around. It really depends on what he wants.”

It’s bending your mind right now that this isn’t just black and white. That it isn’t just dominance and submission, but that there are shades in between, where you could be both or neither. Maybe it’s more of a spectrum sort of thing. Which brings you to your ultimate point: “So, I. I w-want to know-w.” You have to physically bring your hand up to your gills to flatten them down so you don’t glub so much when you talk. This conversation is embarrassing enough as it is. “How did you know that you were. Good at that. A dom, I guess.”

“I…” John goes to take a sip of coffee, but there’s nothing left in his cardboard cup.

“Here.” You swipe it out of his hand, rise to throw it away. While you’re up, you set the water to boil so you can replace John’s beverage. “I’m listening,” you reassure him.

Still in his seat, John sighs. It never occurred to you to have your discussion like this, without you across the table from him like you were conducting an interrogation. “I didn’t really know that was what I was doing until Karkat pointed out to me that I can be really controlling sometimes. I would walk in on the two of them and tell them what to do, and it made me happy when they did it. More than happy—satisfied, I guess, or content, but just really pleased with them. And it made them happy to follow my lead. I know they are strong, which is why I put them through so much. Because I know they can take it, and if they can’t, they always know what to say so I will stop.”

You lean back against the counter. “That’s it? That’s all?” Is there something you’re missing?

“I know I’m not exactly your typical dom. I, you know, praise them a lot, and I don’t really do punishments like a lot of doms would.” You rustle around in the cabinets, pull down a mug, add a teabag. This is Alternian fare. You can at least be a gracious host if you’re going to ask asshole questions. “The culture shock thing might sound weird, but—your lusus probably told you a lot that it knows what’s best for you and that you shouldn’t argue with it, and was disappointed but not really angry when you did something bad, and told you outright when it was happy you did something right?”

The water’s ready. You pour it over the teabag, and the kitchen fills with the aroma of steeping stingerplants. “I guess some people’s lususes were like that.” You didn’t have much time to be a grub with your seahorse dad; you were conscripted into informal service before you were even six sweeps old, flarping with Vriska to help her feed Spidermom, riding your dad around while you tried to keep Feferi’s lusus from committing genocide.

From what you can remember, though, he did get angry. And he instilled in you a pride in your caste, that you were born into royalty and that you should act like it. That you were destined to rule, that others were lesser. It’s taken you a while to unlearn that, now that the game is over and everyone’s here on Earth and you’re among the last of a dying species (and it’s all your own fucking fault). On impulse, you bring out a second mug. If you think too much about your wrigglerhood, you’re going to need some tea yourself.

“Mine was,” John volunteers. “My dad, I mean. Was like that. I guess you could call that my style, or whatever. It’s definitely a thing. Not everyone does it like that, though, and that doesn’t mean other people are wrong or anything, but so far it seems to be working for us, and I think it’s what Dave and Karkat need.”

A pinch of salt for each mug, to really bring out the sweet-savory of the light flavors, and the tea is ready. You move the mugs to the table, but hook your foot around your chair and sit perpendicular from John this time. Conversation goes a little easier when you don’t have to stare right at him. “So it doesn’t have to just be like that?”

“I don’t know a lot about other people’s sex lives.” John’s hands engulf his mug; you like watching his fingers lace together. “But some doms are just sadists, and some have really strict rules and punishments for breaking them, and some are, maybe you could call them royalty? They want waited on hand and foot, and they want their servants to do whatever they say.”

Your ears are physically pricking up. To hide your autonomous reaction, you fiddle with your rings. “That last one,” you say. Your claw varnish is already chipping. “I, I think I, but I w-wouldn’t know-w w-without someone else to, to test it w-with, and w-what if I mess it up—“

“Hey.” John’s voice is warm. “It’s okay. At first, it can be kind of overwhelming. I mean, when I figured out at first, I freaked out, because controlling isn’t exactly something I want to be. But I realized it could be okay, if I did it like that, where everyone could get something out of it.”

You made the tea a little too toasted; the salt pushes it further to bitter than to savory. John is so much more selfless than you could ever be—your instinct is to conquer, not coddle. “Good to know I’m not completely broken, I guess,” you mumble into your drink.

“What? No!” John has to bring his mug down from his mouth to interrupt you. “You are not—you are not _broken_ , or a bad person, or any of that. At least, not because of this.” That grin is more conspiratorial than rueful.

“It doesn’t really matter at the end of the night,” you tell him, “because it’s not like I hav-ve my ow-wn sub or anything.” It’s already fucked enough that you have a pailing complex. At this rate, you’re never going to find a partner that wants to indulge you in your kinky-bass bullshark dominant streak, let alone two. Gee, John, two whole subs? And two subs that you know, that you want to understand, that you could have had yourself.

“Maybe not right now,” John says. “But someday.” He’s being charitable. “Hey, you never know. Maybe you could turn out to be one of those people who can just act out scenes and be happy that way.”

“I wouldn’t know,” you tell your tea.

“Don’t say that.” John brings your mug down from your mouth with a gentle hand—heavy, warm, insistent but not demanding. Okay, yes. You’re beginning to understand. Kar’s always had that same self-loathing streak you have, and if John can soothe that in you, he must be doing wonders for Kar. “I might be able to set up something.”

You fight not to roll your eyes. You merely flare your gills in the equivalent of a snort instead—it’s body language John wouldn’t pick up on. “Don’t just take pity on me.”

“It’s not—” Exasperated. “Eridan, I understand, I get it. I guess I want to prove to you that you aren’t actually as horrible of a person as you want to make yourself out to be. Kind of… guide you through the whole _I’m a disgusting pervert_ thing? I mean, it’s not like Dave and Karkat hate you or anything. I’d have to ask them, but I’m pretty sure that Dave will say yes, at least.”

“W-wait.” You scoot your chair back, angry scraping screech echoing around the kitchen, just so you can stare straight into John’s eyes. Through two pairs of glasses, but still. You need to be able to read when he’s sharking you. “You’re putting serious thought into setting up a—a scene.”

“Is that weird?” John doesn’t seem to know, himself. “I can stop if you think that’s weird.”

“Don’t stop—maybe it’s w-weird, I don’t know-w, I’m not an official card-carrying member of your kink club, but I—you really think—?”

“I can’t answer for the other two, that’s not how our relationship works—but if they do, and now I kind of hope they will, I am _really_ going to like showing off my boys.” The sharpness of John’s grin could cut diamonds.

Well, at least John doesn’t sound like too much of a sick fuck. And if you turn out anything like him, maybe you’re redeemable after all.

\--

SMS from Contact kar vv:

YOU’RE GREENLIT FOR FRIDAY AT SIX PM. HOPE THAT’S NOT TOO EARLY.

\--

So what the fuck are you even supposed to wear when you’re potentially about to dominate your two best friends in front of their boyfriend?

You’re not exactly wanting in the wardrobe department. The dandy in you has always kept abreast of fashion—you were among the few of your friends who branched out into wearing colors other than their own. The problem is that you have too much to choose from. Something casual? Not too casual, or you’d come off as a slob. And not something overly formal, because what if it gets shredded or stained? Something that screams you’re a high class individual, look but don’t touch, emphasizing just how pretty and desirable you are. But you don’t want to come across as ungrateful for this opportunity—you’re trying to present for John, too, and if you preen too much in front of him, he might not follow through on his promise.

It takes you two nights in front of the mirror to find the right combination of haughty and humble. The humans won’t recognize the silhouette, but Kar probably will. It’s an impeccably alchemized Alternian light cavalry uniform, stripped of ornamentation and back to its basic elements. A cravat, dyed with your caste color, fits snug and sinfully silken against your gillslits, tucking into a roguishly half-buttoned shirt under a sharply-pressed jacket. Your tight, high-waisted trousers feed into your boots, impeccably shined, and down the leg of one boot is your riding crop.

You used to wear this when you wanted to play-act at being an adult, channeling someone not quite your ancestor but the person you wanted to grow up to be. It made you feel powerful, sitting up on Seahorsedad’s back, floating above it all, surveying the horizon for distant threats or targets. Getting back into the costume, it fits you like a second skin. This is who you were born and bred to be. You are completely in your element. (You also look more than a little foppish, but if anyone calls you on it, you can always lie that you came from an equestrian center.) What’s important is that you’re comfortable, right?

John answers when you knock on the apartment door at 5:59. At least he’s in a button-down, but the sleeves are rolled up, and it’s tucked into jeans. Nice jeans, and business shoes, but still. “Hey,” John greets you, his smile showing off his stupid hopbeast-denture fangs. You can’t handle how honest he is. “You’re… right on time, actually. Come on in.”

John shuts the door behind you after you cross the threshold. Of course you’re judging the place. It’s an older building, but the kitchen’s been remodeled. The couch in the living room is definitely big enough for three. This apartment is… surprisingly nice. “Three bed, two bath,” John brags, like he’s thinking along with you. “It was just Dave and me at first, then we told Karkat to swallow his pride and just move here already.”

“Three separate respiteblocks?”

John shrugs. “We all keep really weird hours. Dave doesn’t need an office, and sometimes Karkat starts super early, but at least I try to keep a schedule. It helps when you have your own space to, you know, work and stuff, like Dave has room to spread out all his production stuff and I can get a keyboard in my room.”

Two of the bedroom doors are open. The other one is closed. “Whose room is that?”

“Karkat’s.” The clipped edge of his tone says _not yet_. “Come on, have a seat, I want to talk to you first.”

This is it. You swallow so hard your opercula open under your cravat. This is the part where John tells you that this was a nice idea, no really, but they backed out at the last minute, they don’t really want you here, this is just a clinical demonstration, they figured out how much of a deviant you are and you don’t even deserve to touch them.

Still, you follow John to the kitchen. There’s a few things strewn on the table—bottles of water, chocolate, powdered drink mix—just enough to make it look like people actually live here. “What’s w-wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, Eridan, I just want to go over some stuff.” John takes a seat, gestures at the one in front of him.

You eye it warily. You’re not about to give up your height advantage. “Go over w-what, exactly?”

“Just some basics. Safewords and hard limits and stuff. Good thing I know this stuff off the top of my head, because Karkat blows up when we have to talk about it, and Dave always tries to lie about what he can take.”

That gets you to relax a little. John knows these two, knows them well enough to stand in for them and take care of them like this. Finally, you take a seat—but not because he told you to or anything. “Safewords?”

“You know stoplight system, right?”

Anyone who’s spent five minutes researching this on Troogle knows what he’s asking you. You tick them off of your fingers. “Red, yellow, green.”

“Don’t try to run any lights.” Like you know how to drive a scuttlebuggy. Yeah right. “Yellow means tap the brakes. Red means you’re already going somewhere you shouldn’t be going—don’t just stop, but take it back to where it was safe.”

“And they’ll tell me?”

“Or you can ask them. Especially since this is your, you know, first time doing anything like this, you might want to check in, just for your own peace of mind. And hey.” John sits back in his chair, laces his hands behind his head. “Maybe you might need a time-out too, you never know.”

Your mouth is hanging open like you’re trying to breathe underwater. “You can do that?”

“Anyone can do that. It’s what they’re there for. So if they ask you for something you don’t want to do, speak up, okay?”

“Yeah.” This is already getting overwhelming. You’ve always been a learn-by-doing sort of person, so having this lecture right now just serves to make you nervous, aware of just how badly you could fuck this up. “And this thing about hard limits?”

“No bathroom stuff, that’s obvious.” Fuck. You’re not sure whether John thinks you’re a complete degenerate, or whether the fact that you didn’t even think of those as possibilities means you’re a better person than you’re giving yourself credit for. “Don’t call Karkat names, he’ll nope out so quick. Dave’s got real thin skin, like literally, his skin is just really sensitive, so watch your—your nails and teeth and stuff. And don’t freak out when he turns colors, he bruises easy. Karkat _probably_ won’t want you up his ass, in case that was a thing you were planning.”

“Cod dam it.” Yup, if you weren’t freckled before you’re certainly freckled now. You barely resist the urge to put your head in your hands to hide your flushing face; the only thing stopping you is the potential for smears on your glasses. Chute stuff? Fuck. “Water boat you?” Of course. Marine puns. Right when you don’t want them.

“Don’t mess with my fingers too much, I need those for work.” He chuckles, though. You’re not sure whether he thinks you can’t dominate him, or whether he’s not concerned about you overstepping your bounds. “I’ll be there the whole time, in case you need to check in, or you need some help.”

“Right.” Of course. They’re his. You’re not sure why you expected it to be any other way. And if you can be honest with yourself, you’re grateful for the assistance. You just can’t show it yet. Can you joke about this? Will it come across flat? “Of course you wanna watch me, I’m pretty as fuck.”

John snorts out a laugh, shakes his head. Success. “You and Dave, man, you’re too much. Come on, let’s go check on them.” Over the scrape of his chair, he tells you, “I left them alone in there for a little while, told them to get warmed up for you. We’ll see how well they behaved.”

You follow John as he leads you towards the back of the apartment. He stops at the closed door, raps twice, then opens it without waiting for an answer. Like he owns the place, like he can just intrude on anyone else’s privacy at any time. If you had pen and paper, you’d literally be taking notes on how to establish this casual, all-permeating type of authority.

That is, until you get distracted by what’s behind the door. Kar, tiny as always, is hunched over Dave on the sleep slat, holding their faces together like he can’t breathe unless it’s from someone else’s atmosphere aspirators. Dave flung his shirt across the headboard; Kar’s is falling off the foot of the bed. When did he get his grubscars pierced? Dave thumbs at one of them and a trollish chitter fills the room before Kar rolls his body down, against, hard enough that you can hear the rasp of the friction of their jeans. Maybe you could just watch the two of them pail this first time, could stay out of the way while they—

“Jeez, guys, I told you to get warmed up,” John says, and they freeze to look at him, the look a grub gives a lusus when it knows it’s done something it’s not supposed to. “I swear, every time I open a door on you two you’re humping each other like crazy.” His tone is light, teasing, but holds a low rumble of judgment. One day you’ll train your tone to that timbre.

“Oh, trust me, one of us is _a little warm_ right now,” Dave says, shoving Kar so he can prop himself up on his elbows as you and John enter the room properly. “I swear to Christ, if he does that one more time he might actually set my pants on fire.”

“You lie,” Kar accuses him, but when he tackles Dave back to the mattress to lick a wet stripe up the column of his throat, you can see his shoulders and upper back are dusted with pinpoint flecks of mutant red. Of course he has to be burning up. That contrast against your highblood skin—your vascular throbs a little sideways and your blood runs a little colder.

Dave yanks him down for another kiss. They seem so natural in each other’s company. John showed up late, and so did you—this moment is too intimate for you to be included like this. And then Kar’s hand skims down, his thumb glancing across the dark spot on Dave’s chest, and Dave makes a very unmanly yelping noise. “Hey, that ain’t a radio dial, fuckwhistle, don’t—ahh shit,” hips twisting to the side so you can see the start of a hard-on pressed against the front of his skinnies. Real helpful of Kar to start showing you what Dave likes touched. You can see why John likes him as his first mate.

“Oh, come on, stop showing off,” John says. Genial enough, considering they’re disobeying an indirect order. By the time John makes it to the bed, though, they’ve pried themselves off of each other. John’s just there to manhandle them a little bit, get them in position so they can show off properly for you. He gets Kar by the ear; the only way Kar would actually move if John yanked him would be if he wanted to go along with it, so you know he’s submitting now.

John gets Kar on his knees in front of you, feet tucked under his rear, hands on his thighs, physically arranging the troll’s body parts to his liking until he’s a living work of art. The stare Kar gives you, you recognize from Troll Stanley Kubrick’s films, red eyes on fire under heavy brows, somewhere between dignified and defiant. There’s an entire conversation there waiting to be had, but now you’re busy looking at Dave, who’s trying to copy Kar’s pose. He gets it mostly right, but then John steps in front of the two of them, nudging his feet between first Dave’s knees, then Kar’s, so they’re slightly splayed for you. It’s easier to see where Dave is aroused like this. If Kar is out yet, it’s hard to tell. And, of course, Dave can’t stare at you quite like Kar can, with those obnoxious shades on his face.

With the two of them so still in front of you, you’re surprised to hear a rattling sound in the room. It’s John, pulling out a box from under the sleep slat. “Stay,” he says idly. Kar’s shoulders sag a little, but other than that, neither of them move. “Where should I—oh, this should work.” With a little finagling, John balances the container on the seat of Kar’s office chair. “Go on.”

You undo the front latch, push the lid up so it rests against the chair’s back. For a moment, you try to get your bearings. “W-what.” No. No warble. You have to keep it together. You take in a deep breath, feel your gills flutter against your clothes. You are an officer of Her Imperial Condescension’s naval cavalry and you will one hundred percent act the part. “What, _exactly_ , am I lookin’ at here?”

“Our toy box.” A little jumbled, given there’s no internal compartments, but you can still see some semblance of organization. “There’s, um, these,” John explains, poking at a human bulge prosthetic. “And these,” with his fingertip on an oscillating shame stick, “and, uh, those,” pointing to some pieces of silicone that rather look like three-dimensional spades symbols. You have no idea what to do with those. “Then there’s a couple of—jeez, this got really tangled, I guess I didn’t wrap it right.” When John reaches in to pull out the snarl, you see it’s a long rope, the diameter of your littlest prong, woven in through gear made from tanned hides. From the size, you deduce that they’re supposed to go around appendages—wrists, thighs, ankles. The biggest ones, singled apart, look to be collars. “And then—I don’t use these much, I’m better with my hands, but if you want, there you go.”

You reach for the last bit, dragging things out so you can sort through them. Good cod, these really are toys, aren’t they. The flogger’s cords are too long to be practical—anyone using it will have the faux leather wrapping around and hitting what it shouldn’t be. You suppose this next thing is a paddle, but it’s so padded that there’s nothing left for true impact. There’s a cord here, broader on one end than the other—probably sold as a whip by some unscrupulous shark. And then—“what’s this?”

“A crop,” John says. “See, you hold this end, and raise your arm, and—”

“Fuckin’ excuse you, that ain’t a crop, I’m askin’ what it _is_.”

“Oh, uh…” John reaches back to tousle his own hair. Nervous tic, probably. “I mean, that’s how it was packaged—”

“You got got,” you tell him. “Hook, line, and sinker.” There’s a tendril of light in your chest feeling faintly of hope; you grasp at it and start to follow it back to the source of your self-confidence. “Put that down—I’ll show you a real troll’s crop.”

Once you pull it out of your boot, though, John doesn’t look so impressed. “It’s… not as long as I expected,” he says diplomatically.

“It doesn’t have to be long, it just has to reach.” When you put yours next to the one from the toy box, it’s obvious which one is the fake. The length of John’s shines like cheap plastic; yours is—hell if you know exactly what alloy, but clearly metal, made for strength and flexibility both. While your handle is economic and shows the wear of your grip, the handle of the fake is cushioned for comfort. There’s no loop for your wrist on John’s, not even a bulb to cup in the heel of your hand. But the dead giveaway is: “Look at the tips. Tell me which one’s the real one.”

John massages the fake between thumb and fingers. From the way his fingertips slide against it, it’s the same faux hide as the rest of his suboptimal gear. It fits over the shaft of the crop, and there’s enough of a give that it squishes in John’s grip. That stitching to keep the fabric together is abysmal—you’re more like to get a mark from that than from the “keeper” proper. Eventually, John says, “It’s not mine. I mean, this is Karkat’s box—”

There’s a noise from behind you—a cough, perhaps, but more likely than not the start of a mocking laugh from Dave, layered over an amused subaural buzz from Karkat. When you turn, Dave’s got his bottom lip between his teeth, but the corner of his mouth is still twitching up. “A course it isn’t,” you smooth over the awkward moment, and answer Karkat’s whirr with one of your own, to signal you’re in on the joke. “And what’s this about usin’ your whole fuckin’ arm?”

You’ve caught John off-kilter. He’s been so effortlessly dominant through your exchanges with him that it feels good to finally have the upper hand. “I’m not a horse rider, I don’t really know how to use it, just hit the guy with the thing.”

He doesn’t even use the word _equestrian_. “Barbaric,” you sniff, and turn on your heel, crop in hand, to face Dave and Kar.

Dave has his face back under control; it’s unreadable under those shades. And while Kar’s giving away nothing with his body language, he’s talking to you in a way only you can understand—you doubt these mammals can hear his chittering or smell his signaling. _Just fucking try me_ , he’s saying, _I fucking dare you, motherfucker, whip me and I’ll show you what I’m made of_ , with that insubordinate glint in his eye.

There will be world enough and time to use this on Dave. For now, you trace up Kar’s body with the end of your crop, purposefully catching his grubscar piercings with the folded tongue of it before you glide it over his sternum, up his chest until it reaches the dip of his collarbones. Further up, slowing to heighten anticipation, and a tendon stands out sharp in Kar’s neck. Once it slides across the corner of his jaw, he knows better than to fight its progress; you gently, gradually tip his head up until his voicebox juts out of his throat, chin high and haughty. A little more pressure and he arches his back to keep the crop from digging into the sensitive meat under his tongue, testing his balance.

He wants it. Badly. Gagging for it, and you watch his voicebox bob when he swallows. Kar’s so pretty like this, almost delicate; you’d never guess he’s usually a snarling vortex of irritation when he looks so serene in this moment. Still, you hold back. If he likes being here so much, he should tell you with his words. Not _do you want it_ , though. Those safewords John told you about—“What’s your color?” you ask Kar.

He swallows again. His eyes dart from you, then behind your shoulder, then square on you again. You angle your head enough to catch John in your peripheral—nothing. This is your show, then. Something like a tingle runs along your torso column, the chill pulling at non-existent follicles to leave your sharkskin feeling almost too tight for you. Kar stares at you for a good long moment, then drops eye contact, looking down and to your left. “Green,” he says quietly, like he’s spitting out a fang you pulled with a pair of pliers.

You give him no warning. He doesn’t need one if he’s telling you to go ahead and do it already. A flick of your wrist and the tongue of the crop lands exactly where you intended it to, more sound than sting as it welts his right pectoral. The breath he sucks in is heavenly. The mark blooms on his skin in stages, and he whispers “shit” when it fully rises.

“Whoa.” Of course John would add commentary. “You barely moved—how did you do that?”

The corner of your mouth quirks up involuntarily. He doesn’t know, and you do. The power imbalance of this room has subtly shifted with just those few words—you’re at the top of everyone’s chain of command now, even John is deferring to you, you could get _delirious_ with this much power. “I can show you again, but first I wanna see how you do it.” No warble, no stutter. Perfect.

John picks up his faux implement, then strides to Dave’s side. Without asking, he takes the shades off Dave’s face. Even if Dave can’t properly sense it himself, every hormone he has is screaming _yes please try me_. “Well, then, assume the position,” John jokes, but it’s barely out of his mouth before Dave’s down on his hands, back perfectly level. Hm, that does make more sense. If you’re to be whipping them like animals, keeping them on all fours like beasts makes that easier.

Dave is so disciplined. And so eager for what John’s about to give him. “Do you always give them everything they want?” you ask him.

John shrugs, but the slight flush on his ears gives away his embarrassment. “Not always.” Defensive, but immediately he softens. “I just like spoiling them. They deserve nice things, y’know?”

That wasn’t your unspoken question—it was whether they’d _earned_ their rewards—but you bite your tongue and gesture with your crop. “Go on.”

“In,” John says first. A sharp hiss from Dave—oh, _breathe_ in, and “hold,” from John, before he raises his entire arm, lets it hang for full emotional impact. Dave waits, but you can smell his impatience. He’s on the verge of taking another breath when John brings his hand down, swinging from the shoulder to give Dave a powerful, if ill-placed, blow just above his left sacrospinalis. Dave takes it well: breaks his discipline by following the momentum and rocking forward onto his hands, but he makes not a sound, just exhales hard through his nose and squinches his eyes shut while his mouth falls a little open.

You’re focused on Dave, but you can tell John’s looking to you for your opinion. “Whale,” you start with. That brief lapse from Dave makes you want to _break_ him, see him cry and scream and utterly lose his composure. And then, once that thought passes, you feel sick, like a chumbucket his first time at sea, uneasy in your gut and unsettled in your nerves. What kind of deviant are you at your core? You choke it down like bile, look away from Dave—he has tattoos covering the entirety of his back, there’s no mark to see—and turn to give John your verdict. “Inelegant.”

“What?”

“Brutish. Blunt.” He still doesn’t seem to get it. “You did it wrong,” you try, and his eyebrows stop trying to meet in the middle of his forehead. “You don’t need ta’ use your whole fuckin’ arm, all you need is the wrist.”

“Show me again, maybe I can catch it this time.”

“Shore.” Marine puns you can deal with for now, until you get your nerves in check.

Then, from behind you, Kar speaks up. “Again?” Yes, he’s still subconsciously pumping out pail-me-stupid signaling, but layered in-between is a stench of fearworryapprehensiontrepidation.

“Karkat, we talked about this.” Thank cod John’s stepping in. You don’t know how to talk Kar down from this—you do the same fuckin’ thing yourself. “You’re not being punished, remember?” Literally steps closer, free hand coming down to cup the side of Kar’s face.

Kar leans into it gratefully. “I just haven’t been rewarded yet.” Like a mantra, a prayer. That bitter note leaves his hormones.

“That’s right.” When he pulls his hand back, John dawdles around Kar’s horns, pinches at one and runs a thumb over the other; from the rolling of Kar’s eyes, it goes all the way down his torso column. “Now, down. You can take a few, I know you can.”

“Just do it already,” Kar grumbles, but he still sinks his palms into the carpet, leveling his back to mirror Dave’s posture.

It’s too bad he can’t see when you raise an eyebrow at him. You look to John, and he nods at you. This is a thing you can reprimand him for. “An’ you think you’re in a position to be givin’ me fuckin’ orders, do you?”

“Come on—”

You do. Three welts later, Kar’s breaths are coming shallow, a little wet hitch on the first impact; three perfectly-shaped squares are spread across the yoke of his shoulders. “Now try,” you tell John.

“I still don’t get it.”

“It’s in the wrist—you play that coddamn instrument, how can you not—Empress wept, not like that,” as John raises his arm in the air again. You close thumb and forefinger around his not-inconsiderable bicep and they won’t meet. Though your species has an inherent strength and height advantage, you have a feeling he could sorely test them if he tried. Still, John lets you hold his elbow down at his side. “Now, flick.”

“You sound like a Hogwarts professor,” Dave says. Talking to himself, probably, but still. “Swish and flick, wingardium fucking leviosa all up in this bitch, let’s stick a wand up a troll’s nose—” _Whap._ “Okay, _ow_.”

Not right. Not right at all. “Try again.” You still have to hold John’s arm down to keep his instinct at bay. You shouldn’t be so surprised; his strife specibus is the bluntest of all blunt instruments. Still, with his finesse at the piano, you expected a little better from him.

He does it again. The faux crop lands imprecisely again, a little harder but without any true aim. He’s getting the movement, but not the purpose. “Like that?”

“Not quite.” You’re beginning to suspect that this is a thing that must be learned but can’t be taught. “Let me show you again.” Two more quick movements and a checkerboard pattern of red on gray starts on Kar’s back. The whipping isn’t a beating, isn’t hard per se, but the pain comes from the quick snap of tanned lususskin on trollskin.

With each impact, there’s a whining sound. Not from Kar, though—from Dave. A whimpering like he wants so badly he can’t even speak. “Come on, Dave,” John teases him. “You’re not a dog, use your words.”

“Don’t,” tumbles out first. “Not to him,” his thoughts are completely jumbled, “give them to me, I can take it.”

 _Dave always tries to lie about what he can take,_ though. And _Dave’s got real thin skin_. “You want that?” you ask him.

“Fuck yes.”

Kar’s nowhere near close to tapping out, though. The thing about Kar is that he gets tougher when he’s up against adversity. He not only rises to every challenge, but grinds it into dust with his tenacity. What you’ve been giving him is an ordeal, yes, and it’s testing his resolve, but it only gets stronger with every blow. Ironically, the more you stress him, the further he gets from his breaking point. And yet Dave’s trying to make the excuse that Kar can’t take any more, to let him take the rest. “You don’t _need_ that,” you tell Dave.

“What—”

“I said no,” you snap at him, and he recoils. Not visibly, but pulls back on his signaling just that slightest bit, falters in his composure. John would have given in, you realize, would have switched over effortlessly and made Karkat stew instead knowing that Dave was taking what was meant for him. That probably would have worked for him, for the three of them. But you’re not John, and you need to make your differences abundantly clear to these two. You soften your voice when you explain to Dave, put in a timbre that hunters use to calm prey. “I know that’s what you want. But you’re too pretty for that. You already got all this color under your skin—couldn’t even see if I were to give you more marks. You don’t want that to go to waste, do you?”

He pulls a face, but eventually, he agrees with you: “Nah.”

But you know Dave. That’s ambivalent at best. “Come on, it ain’t that bad. Chin up.” He’s still staring at the floor. “Chin up, I said.” And then at your boots, your knees. Your groin, like he’s searching for something—something that isn’t there _yet_ , but threatening to show. Up and up again, until his eyes meet yours. Narrowed, searching for the hidden threat.

There’s no threat, just a treat. You lean down from the waist, keep his chin tipped with the tongue of your crop, and kiss him. Not some sweet little peck on the lips, no, even though it starts with a simple seal of your mouth to his. No, he opens to you, gradually but willingly, and you take a long, languorous taste of his tongue. Fuckin’ sinful, is what it is. These codforsaken humans don’t give a damn about quadrants or what’s proper, they just want and want and _want_ , and this particular degenerate fuck is exactly your flavor of depraved. Hot against you, making your earfins wilt with it, and eagerly matching you move for move, slick and wet and pouring himself into you with every pass of your tongue. You want to peel him apart so you can fuckin’ _drown_ in him.

You push Dave away with your crop instead. He can’t open his eyes for a moment, too focused on how air feels against his fresh-swollen lips. You can see every one of his eyelashes from this distance, gold against pale flushed indecently red.

Oh, wait, you’re ignoring someone, aren’t you. Where Dave’s eyes were narrowed, Kar’s are wide, trying to drink in the sight you’re offering him. You can’t find it in yourself to blame him; he’s watching the two prettiest people you know in a tete-a-tete made public for his benefit. His signaling hits you like a gunshot to the fuckin’ face and you don’t last two seconds before you’re not just leaning down, you’re hauling him up with your hands at the sides of his face to kiss him like you mean it.

It disorients him just like you hoped it would. He rises to his feet gracefully enough, years of training with close-range weapons cording his muscles together just right for the kind of predatory pounce you just forced him to do, but it’s too much too quickly. His cheek is nearly searing against your nose from the blood rush to his head; he has to put a hand out and catch Dave’s shoulder before he rights himself. To even pretend to reach your height he has to stand on the balls of his feet, and he still has to trust in your hold to reach the rest of the way.

You want to shush him. You _do_ shush him. If you’re going to be pailing these decadent quadrant-smearing shitheads, the least you can do is speak their own language. The air rushes out of your gills in something softer than a hiss, and the note you taste on your tongue goes decidedly pale. You push farther and Karkat _gives_ with something like an inaudible snap, letting you take whatever you want, pliant purring rumbling against your skin at every point where he’s connected to you. If Dave was a sinner, Karkat is an angel. Not one of those nice human ones, no, the monsters on your planet, terrifying things with an allure of power. He should know better, he grew up learning the same swill you did, but he’s always been like this, hasn’t he, blasphemously indiscriminate in his affections. Always gave you a little hope, that he could find something to pity in you when no one else could.

Dave is a battle; Karkat is a war. You are a strategist, and you know these things like you know your own blood color. Dave will bicker and bitch, but you’ve already proved yourself to him by telling him no. Karkat, though, he won’t go down without a fight. You can taste as much behind his teeth, the threat of mutiny underneath his signaling. You disconnect—with some effort, mind—and when you look down, he’s debauched, mutant red freckles in pinpoint against his cheeks, hair mussed, lips glossy. So petite, perhaps two hands shorter than you, but so strong. “You,” you breathe down at him.

“Hhhh,” he says back eloquently.

“Jacket,” you tell him. He looks at you, befuddled. “Unfasten my jacket,” you tell him again, this time in Alternian, with the ringing timbre of command that’s impossible to convey in a human language. When he brings up his hands, his fingers are trembling. “Take your time,” you purr at him, rumbling undertones in your English. “And if you move a thread out ‘a line, _I will end you._ ”

“Oh, fuck,” Karkat whispers reverently, bringing his hands up to your shoulder straps and clenching his fists in them like he could yank you down to kiss you again. You refuse to bend, but do his fingers ever make for beautiful epaulettes. When his claws trace down your front, they barely snag on the fabric of your coat. He pushes your brass buttons through the buttonholes as gently as he might thumb across your skin and it gets you right in the vascular. And the bulge. Maybe a lot in the bulge.

You don’t want to ruin this uniform. You spent so much time and energy trying to alchemize it perfectly, and if you ruined it now, what would that say about your ability to hold your composure? “You,” you snap at Dave, tucking your crop away before you snap your fingers at him. He has to know simple commands. “My boots, would you kindly.”

And then there were two. Two sets of hands on you, one disrobing you from the top down, the other peeling your layers off from the bottom up. Both with gentle fingers, searing hot against your coldblooded body even through your clothes. Kar tucks himself up against your side when he goes to push your jacket down your shoulders, reaches up and loops his arms around your neck and presses a shy, bold kiss to the skin showing just above your cravat. Then his hands come down your arms, stripping you bit by bit. Now that the compression of your jacket is gone, the gills between your grubscars open, desperately trying to oxygenate you, regulate your body temperature.

Dave’s tugging leather off your foot. You allow him to pull this one off, set it aside. But once you plant yourself on the floor again, you rest your weight on your bare foot and bring your booted one to the inside of his thigh. The toe of it trails up along the inseam of his jeans before you press the sole against the bulge you find at his fly. “Whale?” you ask him, nudging harder.

He clutches onto your ankle, head bowed, shoulders sagging. “Fuck, Ampora, please,” he babbles. Not moving your foot, but not pressing his crotch into your instep.

More importantly, not doing his damn job. “What’s your color?”

“Green.”

“Then get to w-work.” A little hesitant, easier to glub now that your sides aren’t so compressed—and then you get your eyes off your feet and realize just how well you’re doing.

John’s glasses leave his eyes impossibly wide, supernaturally blue; his bottom lip is bitten under his buck teeth and there’s a darkening of his brown skin lingering on the apples of his cheeks, the tips of his ears. If that wasn’t enough of a tell on its own, you follow the path of his body with your eyes and find his hand cupped around the lump in his jeans. His pheromones hit you like a freight train, all fuckjumbled and sweet: a covetous, possessive stain across them, but run through with a streak of pride and proliferative lust. He did tell you he’d like showing off his _boys_ , but you’d never have thought him to be quite so literal. “Don’t mind me,” he mouths at you, barely whispering so as not to catch the attention of the other two.

Hard to, when they’re hell-bent on distracting you. Dave presses his lips to where your breeches meet your boots and with shaking hands disrobes you. You want to say _good_ , but you don’t want him getting any ideas that what he did just then was fuckin’ acceptable in any way. “Better,” you snip, stepping off of him once both your feet are bare. “Now my breeches, if you would. Kar,” and he snaps his head up to meet your eyes. “My shirt, _s’il te plaît_.”

“ _Vous_ ,” you hear him grumble under his breath, but he looks down and starts picking at your buttons with careful claws anyway.

Fuckin’ excuse him, what the hell did he just say to you? You bring two strong fingertips to his chin, push it up and bare his throat; it presses him closer to your side so he won’t unbalance himself, and he’s practically vibrating against you from how turned on he is that you can physically direct him where you want him so effortlessly. “ _Tu_ ,” you breathe into his face. There’s a reason you used the second-person singular: It’s intimate, and so casually, like you can take it for granted. For right now, in this moment, he belongs to you.

“ _Merde_ ,” he whispers up at you, even more red freckles blooming on his face.

Your grip gets harder. “Watch your fuckin’ mouth.” When you let go of his jaw, you’ve left fingerprint memories there, little sooty bruises rising in the shadow of your fingers.

“Listen to him, Karkat.” Quiet, but heavy with meaning. In the meantime, John’s busying himself with putting away the toybox so he’ll have somewhere to put his ass, best seat in the house, front-row tickets to the show of a lifetime.

Kar’s attention falters for a flicker of a second—eyes darting to John for confirmation—and then he lets his head dip down, contrite. “Sorry.”

“You’ll do better,” you tell him, “won’t you.” You card a gentle hand through his hair, find a horn; he resonates like a tuning fork when you flick your claw against it, and his shiver runs through you as well.

He still works on you. Him and Dave both, stripping you as best they can with pleasure-numbed fingers. When Kar goes to pull the hem of your shirt out of your pants, Dave’s hands crawl up to your waist, tracing the skintight seams of your thighs until he can get to the fasten at the front. Their fingers meet, hook together before either of them can think better of it, and then Kar bares your gills to the room, pushes your shirt off your shoulders. He thumbs at the pulse point in your wrists when he tugs at the cuffs to get the offending article out of your sight.

Where Kar’s hands were delicate, Dave’s fingers have intent, ten weapons of mass destruction set for search and destroy as they skitter across your sharkskin. Before he gets to the final button of your fly, he’s already pressing the length of his palm against the lump in your breeches. By the time he pushes the kit down your hips and bares your ass to the world (because that’s how much your focus has narrowed, these three and you are all that matters), your bulge uncoils in a thrash that leaves you more than a little lightheaded.

Dave, for his part, is staring at it like he’s just discovered Atlantis. “Jesus Christ and his half-brother,” falls out of his mouth before he can think better of it.

You can’t find it in you to blame him. Not to be a vainglorious prick, but you do have a very nice bulge, and people ought to touch it more often. You’re large, for a troll, and so it only makes sense that your bulge would be proportional to that. If it weren’t so violently violet, it would do a very good impression of a ribbon eel: it has two fluttering fins down the sides of it and feeler-fronds at the tip, a seadweller feature. In its natural state, it reaches up nearly to your waist as it slicks itself across your belly, looking haphazardly for friction. Too bad your nook doesn’t match—it’s as respectable as any you’ve met, but it’s _shallow_ and _broad_ , nothing like the elegant whip-curve of your bulge.

Your breeches fall to your knees. Dave pulls them the rest of the way down, and no sooner do you step out of them than his hands curl in inexorable parentheses around your hips, holding you in place so his mouth can trace a sloppy pattern across your stomach. He’s _licking up after you_ , the slut. “What does it taste like?” you josh him.

“Cum,” he says, in the same tone he uses for _duh_. But you don’t miss the way his eyes twitch under his eyelids—rolling back as your flavor profile fucks his tongue. Humans are inelegant little creatures, but they’re not so primitive that they can’t recognize proper signaling when they get a taste.

You told Kar to curb his tongue. Now you’re wishing you would have admonished Dave the same, because it’s not just that he’s licking at your skin, it’s that your bulge has suddenly found a hot, wet hole it wants to be in and Dave’s suddenly found a turgid, sex-flavored tentacle he wants to suck. The underside of your bulge quests towards his face and he catches it against the flats of his teeth, running his tongue sloppy against it as his lips try to kiss at it.

That’s his—that’s his mouth on your—that’s his teeth against your—but teeth should never—that’s so—your vascular goes tight in your throat—so wrong—dangerous deviant spawnofa—his tongue on—his lips—his—

It feels good. It feels fuckin’ _fantastic_. It’s too much at once, the liquid heat from the inside of Dave’s mouth threatening to melt you. And so, even as you have a hand on Kar’s horn to keep him tucked into your side, you reach down with the other to thread through Dave’s hair and wrench him away from your leviathan. It’s already left a jellied smear down his chin. “What the _fuck_ did I just say about watchin’ your mouth.”

“Hnn,” comes out of Dave weak and warbled, eyes half-lidded when he peers up at you.

You take your hand away from Kar, undo your cravat, and clean off Dave’s face with it. Doesn’t matter that the color is the same—it’ll stain. Worthless now. You toss it aside. You’re now completely naked, give or take twenty or so golden baubles, and these two urchins still somehow have pants on. All you want is to have Dave’s mouth on you again, but they need to get as bare as you as soon as possible.

Hold that thought.

Your free hand finds Kar’s hair again. Pushes down on the top of his head, first gently, then harder when he doesn’t take the hint, rings biting into his thinkpan cage. You’ve got them both on their knees in front of you, ready to worship. Your bulge has a painful pulse running through it, your nook literally dripping from anticipation.

“Strip,” you tell them, and pull them by the hair to your kraken.

Well, maybe you should have been a little clearer with your command, but you’re not entirely displeased with this outcome. At the same time as you’re drawing them in, they’re reaching for each other, scrabbling at each other’s pants even while their mouths skate along either side of your bulge. They’re trying to kiss each other, you realize, trying to get closer even with your bulge in the way, but this way you can feel—you can feel how they would—how they would normally, that heat, that intensity, tongues flickering, teeth threatening.

Oh, but Kar’s so _careful_ , though, and it twists your vascular something fierce to see how he’s tucked his lips over his fangs so there’s no chance of him slicing you open. You—that—you knew before you even walked in here tonight that you’re into some cullable offenses, but _this_ , this is what destroys you. Because it’s not just that he has the fat, slick curve of the underside of your bulge against his tongue, it’s that he’s looking at you like he wants to devour you and drink every milliliter of your genetic material that’s making ice flow through your veins.

Everything’s a mess. You’re making it worse, you realize, purple sticky dripping everywhere, but it’s also in the rumple of their hair around your fingers, the frustration-claw of hands as they try to shuck clothing. Kar’s trying to keep eye contact, but Dave keeps distracting him, not quite getting him naked but putting his hands in his pants all the same. You know when Dave finds his bulge, because Kar pants against you, eyes sliding closed.

Dave’s always been a good multitasker, though, hasn’t he. Always working on so many things at once. Still working on the both of you, trying to please the two trolls he’s in front of. The bottom of the food chain, you realize, lowest totem on the pole. And such a people pleaser, too—it comes so naturally to him. He’s let the fronds of your bulge into his mouth, not even choking too much as pre-mat dribbles down his throat, and he tongues at them as delicately as his fingers trace the fine scars lacing across Kar’s skin.

It comes to the point, though, where they’re not so much getting naked as getting their pants tangled around their ankles, and not so much mouthing at you as they are kissing each other. Very pretty, but no. Not tonight. You twist your hands in their hair and they draw back, look at you with a kind of ardency that you never dared to hope for. “Bed,” you growl at them, “ _now_ ,” and shove them in that direction.

Without any attention, your bulge twists in on itself—cramps even harder as Dave and Kar start a stunning naked reenactment of what you walked in on not too long ago, except now this time Kar’s stretched out under Dave’s wiry frame. Fuck, they look so beautiful, pale against ash, and they kiss each other in such a careful, tender way. Years of practice, most like. Dave’s hard, and Kar’s out—you note with a twang of pride that being a mutant doesn’t mean he’s _freakish_ by any means, his bulge at least looks like it belongs to him. A bit of a ridge along the sides, imitating the fins on the sides of yours, but normal enough. Right now, with the two of them moving against each other, that bulge starts curling around Dave’s, how do you say, _cock_ , tip rubbing against the slit and smearing the clear pre-mat humans have.

But you didn’t come here for a show, you came to _conquer_ , and you have two different battlegrounds tonight. It hurts, looking at them, knowing they would go on just fine without you—fuck, hurts like it used to, and you need. You need contact. And they’ll let you take it. Like you’re aiming for a pool, you dive right into the middle, hands prying these two apart and getting in the middle like they were made to sandwich you like this.

It works marvelously well, actually. With a minimal tangle of limbs, everything rights itself: Kar under you, uncharacteristically pliant, and Dave’s shaft snug against the lush curves of your perfect rear. (You have a lovely ass. They’d be idiots if they tried to say otherwise.) Kar peers up at you like you’re his own personal puzzle and he’s withholding the last piece. “Hey,” he says, hoarse and gentle. His vocal cords ring with a harmonious note, trying to edge away from any contention.

If he’s about to shoosh you during actual for real sex, he’s going to get a papping of his own. You’re not going to melt if this vacillates between red and black, but if Kar starts mushing all his quadrants together like this, you’re not sure you’re ready for the smeared mess. To keep him from getting any ideas, you grab his wrists, pin them above his head one at a time so you don’t lose your precarious balance. “Don’t you dare,” you tell him. “Keep it red.”

“Red, what, are you okay, what’s—”

Fucking John and his fucking concern trolling. Just as he’s about to get all up in this cozy business you’ve established, you reach out and doof at his face with a hand full of rings. They clack against his glasses. “I said _keep_ it red,” you snarl, and, oh fuck, _yes_. The timbre you just unleashed was unexpected, but you can work with that. You could definitely go black for John, especially if he’s going to bulgeblock you.

John throws both his hands up in a conceding gesture. “Hey, it’s your show, I’m just the ringleader of this little circus.” While he’s on his corner of the mattress, he starts losing his clothes.

Under you, you can feel Kar heating up. “Fuck,” you whisper, watching red dots rise at his thighs under your hips. “You like that, don’t you. That he’s watching.”

“’Course he does, look at him,” Dave says helpfully, pressing himself against your back and tonguing up your neck, and oh shit, there go your gills. He’s got the heat slickmuscle of his tongue right against the slits and they’re threatening to open and he’s basically putting his mouth on your troll lungs but when did something that kinky ever stop him before? “These are fucking awesome, by the way. Just in case you were wondering.”

“They’re also sensitive, you beachspawn,” but no, he doesn’t care, does he, just caresses his hands down your sides and finds the filaments of your breathing apparatus starting to gape to reoxygenate you. “Careful with your human ff _fffffff_ —”

These two are too much. Just as you’re about to chide Dave for pokin’ into things he ain’t got the absolute right to touch, Kar’s got his free hand back, palm skating across the flat of your belly with his fingers pointing south and bypassing your bulge before he thinks better of it and starts idly rubbing at the tender gap between phallus and nook. His fingertips feel like lava meeting the sea; these three are your own personal island.

You know what you want. You want him in your nook. You want Dave in your nook. Your nook is just fuckin’ _empty_ right now and it _aches_ like it has a thinkpan of its own and all it ever thinks about is how much it wants to be stuffed. Which is probably why it feels like your thinkmeat is on vacation as you try to parse through this. Yes, you’re being greedy, yes, you want to take, but that’s—that’s not _dominant_ , is it?

While you’re in deadlock over whether you’re allowed to want things, Kar starts making up your mind for you. You can understand how he balances everything now—there’s impulse, and then there’s direction, and Kar fine-tunes everything, gets everyone towards the same goal. He presses on, runs the edge of a claw around the rim of your nook, and starts to breach you, sharp first.

Your nook is meant to take this. Trolls are more resilient than to get shredded to ribbons from the inside out just because someone wants to finger instead of outright fuck. But there’s meant to take this, and there’s being able to handle the sensation, and just from Kar’s finger you think you might be spinning out of your pan. It’s like he just put a curling iron in your nook, only instead of giving you third degree burns it’s making a sex-heat coil inside your coldblooded body, looping around his fingers and clamping close until you can’t remember how to breathe.

Dave might actually be helping. The more he thumbs at the gills on your sides, licks at the ones on your neck, the more they gape open and the more they can steal oxygen out of the dry of the room. It burns, perfectly nice, a different burn than body heat, more of a sting than a throb, but it puts a crisp edge on everything, makes everything seem a bit more real. “ _More_ ,” falls out of your mouth, greedy and dark, the one four-letter word you’ve never dared to say.

The silence, stillness after that is almost too much to bear. One syllable and you’ve pushed them away, shown your true nature and how disgusting it is. You’re a selfish little shit and you never wanted them to know that, how horrible you are because you can never have enough.

Until Kar skips two fingers and goes straight to three. Until Dave ruts with impatience against your lower back and bites you just hard enough, two perfect half-moon teeth marks on either side of the slope of your shoulder. Until your vascular grows wings and feels like it’s about to burst out of you, because this, you never hoped, you never _dreamed_ —

Self-doubt is becoming a thing of the past. The recent past, but the past all the same. Kar walks his claws along the cling of your nook and it has you seeing stars. “Quit bein’ a fuckin’ tease and put your coddamn bulge in there,” you mutter through your teeth.

“I—” Oh. Oh, _fuck_ , how dare he be so adorable in the middle of sex, because Kar bites his lip and turns his head and you have to lick his horn for that, because that’s why. That’s why he’s fingering you like humans do instead of starting with what your species is used to, the slow push of his bulge. Because he can’t, can he. And neither can you, you have ten razors at the ends of your prongs and you’ll never know what it feels like to have a human pulse from such an intimate interior place at your fingerprints.

“You w-wanna finger me?” you ask him instead. Kar nods under your chin and you suck his horn into your mouth—mostly because you want to, but also as a kind of reward, because as much as you like that he wants that, he also said exactly what you want to hear. An elegant frisson creeps along his skin; you only keep it going when you pull away to whisper into his ear instead. “Then open me up for him.” You’ll need it—Dave’s cock is broad and blunt and bone-dry, and it won’t be as much of an easing-in as much as it’ll be a forceful shove.

You’re not sure Dave heard. It might not be relevant. He’s now trying the same thing on your headgear that you demonstrated on Kar and it’s making you a little dizzy, if vertigo was a thing you could feel in your bones. It only gets worse when Dave’s hand starts playing between your legs right alongside Kar’s, doodling his fingertips in the premat that’s dribbled down your thighs. “Shit, you’re so wet,” he says, like it’s a _good_ thing, and you trill a little for him out of pure vanity.  “And so cold, fuck, we really gotta warm you up.”

That’s not how it works, you want to tell him, your vascular makes you run colder when your body’s in a heightened state, but he and Kar are trying, smashing their bodies against yours and leaving heat in their wake. The temperature differential makes it hard for you to regulate your iceblood, keep you running cool, and you’re terrified you’ll overheat before you overload, but this—this now—this is good. Hot, and solid, and surrounding you, like you’re the only thing worth their time and attention.

Kar fucks his fingers into you thoroughly—not rough, but sure and deep. Testing how your body reacts. He drags out hard when you clench around him, but that one wasn’t your fuckin’ fault, that was Dave taking the wet from your nook and smearing it back, even further, past the short span between front hole and back entrance, and he. He stops. There. With his slick fingertips. Warm, jellied pressure against something unbearably sensitive, pressing _up_ and _in_ and you’re such a _whore_ that the rim of it starts to give under Dave’s ministrations. But Dave promptly tells your internal monologue to go fuck itself, because he just whispers “holy shit, that’s hot” against your neck. “You want me here?” Still rubbing, persuading, and a little more of you relaxes open even as your nook clamps down around Kar’s prongs.

Fuck, he’s right. You have two holes and two bulges to cram into you. But—chute stuff—you don’t think you can—you don’t want to. And, with what feels like a jolt of pure euphoria, you realize you don’t _have_ to. They already like you plenty, you don’t have to impress them. And so you reach behind you, pull on Dave’s hair until he moans into the flaps of your gills. “Yellow,” you grit out, because it’s easier than saying _no_ right now.

Dave follows the command. _Instantly_. No hesitation. His fingertips slip away, not even reluctantly, just like it’s a thing that happens, like you’re allowed to say that whenever you want and they’ll just stop. It’s giving you a headrush. And a bulgerush. And an everything rush, your blood pressure is going crazy with the heat rushing through you, and it only gets more intense when Dave’s dripping fingertips go to where Kar’s fingers have made a home—he—he wouldn’t—

As it turns out, you _can_ take four. Not painlessly, not at first, but that ache tempers out into something sweet, almost. “Here?” Dave kisses into your earfin.

“Green.”

“Now?” Kar asks.

“ _Fuckin_ ’ green, an’ don’t you dare second-guess me again.” You tighten your fingers on Kar’s wrist, like you could twist his hand off.

The movement travels through him; his fingers fall out of you. For the most part. The edge of a claw is still at the rim of your nook, pulling it towards him and that _stings_ but then Dave’s moving his hips against you and the head of his cock drags down from your sacrospinalis past what you told him not to touch, enough of a threat that you startle in your own skin. But no, he—he’s at—right there, where Kar’s holding you open, it feels imposing, too much, _not enough_ , it might hurt or it might not but you’ll never know until it’s fuckin’ _in you_.

He has to fight your body a little, the bulb of his cockhead flaring across the slit between your legs before he aims for home and starts a slow, steady push. Oh, fuck, it burns. _Just right_ , just so. The solid heat of him, and then there’s the flare that runs through you when the lining of your nook ripples to catch the beads of damp that were already drooling out of his dick. Dave’s alien hormones are screaming _fuck me baby_ to your clutch and it’s drinking him in eagerly. With that wet sheen going all the way down his shaft, every inch that enters you feels like it sizzles. Your genebladder wants his material so badly.

You bottom out just when he gets himself snug against you. Still, “That’s all?” you goad him, just to be a brat, just because you can.

“Yeah,” Dave sighs out, all shivery and tight. It feels so good to know you’re affecting him as much as he’s getting to you. “Lemme move.”

“No.” It’s not your fault his species was built stupid. If he were a troll, he could at least thrash in you while you’re pelvis to pelvis. But with you holding him so tight like this, you can feel his pulse rush through him.

Kar’s hand is still meandering around the base of your bulge, sometimes wandering back to feel where you’re being filled, sometimes letting your bulge loop around the span of his palm. “Eridan,” he chirrs at you, “fuck, you—you’re—you look—Dave, you’re _so good_ ,” falls out of his mouth.

Dave’s pressed against your back, cheekbone to shoulderblade, like he needs emotional support for this. You uncurl your fingers from his hair, bring your hand around so you can pet at his flank, his thigh. “So w-whale behav-ved,” you stutter out.

“Isn’t he, though,” John comments. Oh, right. The lender of your two subs tonight. He’s staring at you unabashedly, openly stroking his dick to the pretty picture you make with a bulge in you. He thinks you’re hot enough to wank to and it makes your earfins flare with delight. “He’s a good lay if you can get him to focus.”

And you undoubtedly got him to focus, is the implication. On you. Solely on you. Your ego could dwarf planets. “Focus on me,” you tell him. “And keep it slow.”

Dave’s hands give away his tension; they’re clawing at every bit of you they can reach, across your torso to skitter his nails against your thoracic cage, down your thigh only to scratch his way back up seconds later. He draws back and pistons back in just as smoothly—a _larghissimo_ movement that nearly gives you time to close back up before he splits you open again. A shiver runs through him when he buries himself fully again. “So cold,” he hisses, but keeps rocking his hips so he can thrust into and out of you. Such a crude way of doing it, but he’s good at it and it makes you feel _amazing_ , like the heatpressure of him rolls back and forth along your insides. “Ampora, _fuck_.”

But it’s not just him, and that’s what threatens to bring you down—there’s another body under you, Kar with hands and mouth of his own, and the way he traces the ridge on the underside of Dave’s cock where it’s breaching you is tender and tempting all at once. “Kiss me,” you tell him on impulse, because you want his tongue to touch yours like that.

Kar obeys, yes, but the way he kisses you is the way Dave’s taking you, at his leisure, like you’re someone who deserves to be pampered and pleasured like this. You weren’t expecting so many emotions over a good pail, but without Dave to hold your chest together and without Kar to guide your short, hitching movements, you don’t think you could make it through this alone. “Tell me,” he pours into your mouth between long caresses of his lips against yours, “tell me what you want, I, we, we’ll do it, tell us. Please.”

The hand you still have at his wrist slides up, and you thread your fingers through his. He looks sinful under you like this, hot as hellfire at every place where your bodies touch. “You—when you—you got your bulge around his,” you babble, because you’re being strung along the drawn-out sensation of Dave fucking himself into you insistently but patiently. “I—do it. Do it right now.”

“With his bulge in—”

“With his bulge in,” you interrupt him, and tighten your grip on his hand so your bones grind together. “ _Now_ ,” because if he waits any longer you might lose your nerve.

First, he has to get you close enough where he can run his bulge like a hot, huge tongue against the drip between your legs. Dave helps by pushing you down with his hips at your ass, and Karkat pulls you the rest of the way, bracing your body so his bulge can fight its way in.

And it is a fight, there’s no mistaking that. The taper of it is what you’re used to, but having someone else already in here isn’t quite. Dave’s thrusts get more shallow as Karkat’s bulge spreads you even further open. You can take him easily enough at the rim of your nook, it’s just further up, before it closes off at your seedflaps, where it starts to narrow. And the mutant heat of him is something else entirely, like he could sear away the sin in you.

Cod, the stretch is _incredible_ , knowing these two are trying their damnedest to fill you up and satisfy you. “Fuck, I can—oh god,” Dave whimpers, not even trying to move anymore as Kar crawls his way in alongside. “That—do that—”

Because Kar’s feeding his thick into you, yeah, but he’s also threading it around Dave’s shaft. Literally screwing. Inside you. Fuck. _Fuck_. And Kar’s copious premat is seeping into you and your body is slurping it up happily, even as the texture around the solid shaft in you slowly creeps, unspools from one way and wraps around the other, thrashing around as best he can from clockwise to counterclockwise until your thinkpan whirls with trying to keep up with him.

Dave’s still trying to move his hips, even though he’s now got a bulge and a nook to fuck into, both at once, mutant hot and violet cold. “I—I can’t,” he says shakily, but he never stops, just keeps that same steady pace he started from the outset, ruthless in its even beat. “Eridan, fuck, I can’t hold it, gimme a min’, gonna lose it if you don’t—”

“Faster,” you tell him instead, and he sobs. His entire body hitches around the noise, pushing him impossibly deeper into you, but he—he tries, it comes in fits and starts but he edges up the tempo until the drag and draw of him against the inside of your nook threatens to set you alight. Kar’s bulge is cramping around his, getting its own share of the friction and ever-shifting pressure.

“Dave,” you say, and a particularly brutal thrust has his cock threatening to burst past your seedflaps to empty straight into your genebladder. _Fuck_ , it shouldn’t be as hot as it is that it feels like he wants to rip your insides open to give you what you want. “Do it, do it _now_ —”

The sound that comes out of Dave’s chest sounds like grief, like he doesn’t want it to be over so soon, but he lets go and cums inside you ( _because you told him to_ , the nastiest part of what’s left of your gray matter purrs). Oh, _oh_ , and it’s not just that there’s a torrent of alien spunk pulsing out of him and filling you up, it’s that your seedflaps _slam_ open, so quick it’s painful, and your genebladder sucks up what it can, not enough, not _near_ enough, these pathetic humans and their pitiful fills, so you’re still rapacious for more.

He’s too sensitive to stay in you; Kar lets him slide out. But it means that with three times the slick, Kar can thrash as much as he wants. And this— _this._ This is how you were meant to pail, riding someone who looks at you like you’re his god and moving your hips in time with the spastic, uncontrolled undulation of his bulge in you. Being held by someone who just sated himself in you, who touches you like you’re someone to be worshiped. Even now Dave’s still working to make you feel good, reaching down and fumbling for your kraken so he can pet it, tug at it, loop it around his fingers. It feels like he’s pulling at the root of you, trying to find where your core is by what resists the hardest, and he wants you to come apart at the seams just like he did.

It only coils you tighter, makes you clamp against Kar. He whines under you, holds your hand so aggressively that his claws start pricking blood at your phalange webbing, and tries to drive up like it would get him closer to you, further in you. You have to tighten your thighs to pin him back down to the concupiscent platform, and it takes you leaning over him and kissing him before he stops squirming so much. Beneath you, at least. Inside you he’s twisting and curling and lashing and pulsing and keeping Dave’s swill from leaking out of you and pushing it right back up—right back in—

That ripple shivers through Kar’s bulge again. “Close?” you pant down at him. He nods frantically, but it’s not enough, you need to hear him say it, out loud, say that he needs it, needs you, needs to spill because of you and what you’re doing to him. “I asked you a question. Answer me,” in strident Alternian with a ringing chime of command under your tone.

“Yes, fuck—please, please,” and there isn’t quite a word in Alternian that’s so bland and inoffensive but Kar might go for the next best thing. What comes out of his mouth is an exquisite bugmash of consonants. The idiom, literally translated into English, is long and snarled and doesn’t quite capture the rich history of your species and your planet, but the jist is somewhere between _I submit myself to your judgment, you who knows me better than I know myself_ and _show me mercy, I who do not deserve it_.

You nearly contribute on the spot.

As it is, your clutch shifts around him like the sea meeting the shore, slow but powerful waves that move in counterpoint to his efforts. “Mercy,” Kar says again in slurred Alternian, and he tips his head back and bares his throat to you.

How can you _not_ take what’s being offered to you so freely? Your mouth slips and your tongue also slips and then your teeth slip right after that, razing along the delicate skin under his jaw, and this is what undoes him. His blood in your mouth, his bulge in your nook, royal cold against heresy hot, and he comes like that, trusting you to this extent, with his external carotid millimeters from your fangs. He shoves into you, straightens so the very tip of him is nudging at your flaps again, and spills messily, earnestly, his cries muffled by your mouth at his squawkbox.

Fuck, more, there’s more, so much, more like you’re used to. Kar’s bulge cramps in you with every new jet of material he gives you, and your nook lining squeezes him right back, rippling along in counterpoint to pull the most out of him that you can. And it’s still not enough, because it’s not season ( _and it won’t ever be ever again and it’s all your own damn fault_ , says the part of you that never shuts up and always has something negative to say). It’s still not enough, because you’re still not full ( _and you’re so greedy that you’ll never feel that way, will you_ , god, it won’t stop, it won’t stop). You want a full load, damn It, you want half a pail, not these negligible piddly things that are never going to be enough to satisfy you—

Kar goes limp under you, bulge sluggishly crawling out of the mess he made of your clutch. Most of it is locked away safe in your genebladder, and if you cared to look down you’d have a pearl-clutching moment of vanity because there’s a bulge in your perfectly flat belly, but there’s just those little dribbles left diluting themselves in your own wet and dripping out of you. Kar’s bulge has violet smears all over it. You think you might pass out.

Except then there’s John fucking Egbert looking at you with eyes blown wide behind his glasses and whispering “holy fuck” like it’s a prayer while his fist still works on his cock. Your slit cramps around nothing and your mouth starts to water because he is _really_ living up to that blueblood stereotype.

The snarl that comes out of your mouth has to grind its way out of your bones first. Lips curled, baring your teeth, you plant a hand on Kar’s chest, shrug out from under Dave, and launch yourself at John so you can feel him in you instead.

From somewhere that doesn’t matter anymore, you might hear Kar whisper “but Eridan, you _can’t_ take him, that’s my—“ Well, let him try to fuckin’ stop you. You’re going to cram this thing into you if it’s the last thing you do, and it’s feeling more and more like it might be, because it goes on forever. It hurts. You need it so badly and you can’t get all of it and it’s going to kill you that you can’t get what you want and meanwhile your gills, both sets, are bared with a seething hiss of frustration because your nook just isn’t _deep_ enough, you’re endowed more on the outside than in the interior, but you’re going to take that last load from him, constellations be damned.

John takes his hand away from his bulge, fastens both around your hips instead. His skin is visibly prickling from the contrast of your body temperatures; your earfins frantically flare, trying to expose more skin so you can cool off faster. “Hey, don’t hurt yourself,” he says shakily, but you can feel him twitching eagerly in you.

“Fuck you,” you spit out from behind your teeth. “Give it to me.”

“I don’t think I—“

If he were a seadweller, you’d be flattening his gills to his neck right now with the way you’re gripping at his throat. As it is, his breath goes a little reedy. “What did I just say,” you whisper. “ _Give. It. To. Me._ ” To compensate for how shallow your nook is, your not-inconsiderable bulge wraps its way down the rest of John’s length. And with the last of the strength in your legs, you close your thighs around John’s waist and wrestle him so he’s over you, with more leverage. No excuse not to give you his best.

And he does. Cautiously, at first. Every movement he makes in you is like he’s hollowing out a place for himself in you, leaving a space he can fuck into. What your nook can’t take, your bulge closes around, and the friction of him against the rings of it is exquisite on its own while you give him another channel to thrust against. You never let go of his airway, squeezing and releasing to listen to him choke before you hear the sweet sound of air sucked into his atmosphere aspirators.

He pummels into you hot and desperate—when you take away his aspect, it leaves him helpless, _hopeless_ , and that makes your aspect flare in your chest, you feel like you could detonate and destroy this entire goddamn planet with the force of the light coursing through you—“Eridan,” he murmurs to you, a caress of words like you’re more than a sideshow, more than a guest, almost a lover, “you feel so good, I want to—let me come, make you feel good too—“

You clamp down around what you can and squeeze hard around the rest. “Then _come_ , you fuckin’ flotsam,” said with such force that spittle froths out of your mouth. And this human, the one who holds the leads that leash the two you were ever closest to, the one who dominates them effortlessly, submits himself to your will and fulfills his orders diligently.

That’s what makes it start.

The first wave of it crashes through you and crushes everything in its path. The second approach smears it all down. The third wipes everything away, out of you. The fourth _scours_ through you like it could melt you down to your bones. When you contribute, it’s tidal, and you crest for longer than you thought, reaching further and further up even as John falls out of you, even as your vascular gives up and you have a searing, nearly-painful hot flash, even as Kar and Dave pull you in to hold you while you’re shaking and dote on you in your frenzy. Someone’s human fingers are inside you, pumping along the plumped, stinging-sensitive walls of your nook to wring you dry. The material you were holding—three, three contributions, all to you, like offerings to a god—gushes out of you when your bulge starts getting attention, too. You’re a mess and you’re drowning, you who can breathe underwater, submerged so deep that there’s nothing but your own darkness down here.

Nothing is coherent. Everything is fragments, so delicate you feel like you could cut yourself on them. Dave pushing your violet forelock away from your forehead, barely daring to whisper his fingertips across the bones of your face. Kar leaning in to press himself to you again, jacking up your fever even higher, kissing you like through your lips his blood powers could teach your pumpbiscuit how to beat right again. John breathing little “haah, haah, haah” sounds into your ear before he pulls you bodily away from your petting comforts, nearly drags you along the floor.

Running water. You blink and John’s testing it with his fingers and hissing. You blink again and he has one of your ankles in his (hot, hot, burning, _branding_ ) hand, introducing it to a tub filled with extremely cold water.

He submerges you, your gills flare, and you finally get a good breath for the first time tonight. You might also be breathing in your own slurry, and the juices of three other people. (It’s… mildly arousing.) As the water goes tepid, someone else comes in, and with a slosh the contents of the freezer’s ice bin end up around your lap. It feels _amazing_. No one told you it was possible to get this chafed when your princely parts naturally get so wet. Everything still feels swollen and bruised and oversensitive, but slowly, with fits and starts, you’re rehoming yourself in your own body.

Everything is too loud, too much. You bring your earfins underwater, too. Except without Kar nattering something meaningless in the background to Dave, who also never shuts up, you’re stuck with just you. Your own thoughts. What you just _did_. Bubbles come forcefully out of your mouth as you choke on nothing, shift until you’re curled in on yourself against the chilly basin of the tub. You’re so selfish. You’re so greedy. You just—you hurt them. Deliberately. Because it made you _happy_. Because it _gets you off_.

John even takes your silence away from you, pulls the stopper to let the water drain, and it’s not that you’re cold, not even that you’re naked, it’s that _they know how horrible you are_ that’s making you shiver. Kar reaches down with a towel. You bat it away. “Don’t touch me,” but rather than coming out imperious like it was while you were riding your high, it comes out weak and ineffectual. You already wiped your contagion all over them tonight. They shouldn’t overexpose themselves to you.

Kar ignores you. Well, mostly—he just drops the terrycloth on your shoulder and lets it start soaking up the water from your sealskin. That makes you feel worse. They don’t normally listen to you when you have something to say. What made you think they were following your orders then?

“Dude,” Dave chimes in when you refuse to move. “Are you okay?”

“I—” The vowel cracks over something ugly. “I don’t know-w-w-w?”

“That’s not the right answer.” Somehow you managed to fuck even _this_ up. “Can seatrolls eat chocolate? Is that a thing you can do?”

“I don’t deserv-ve it,” you glub, rolling with an obnoxious rubbery noise until you’re facing away from him and smashing the towel against the tub.

“Hey,” John chimes in, his voice warm, “Eridan, your clothes are kind of super fancy and I wasn’t so sure you wanted to wear—” Something soft falls to the floor. “Holy shit, are you okay?”

“I’m fuckin’ _aw-wful_ ,” you tell him, both how you feel and who you _are_.

“No, you’re not.” Kar’s usually gravelly voice seems a lot softer when it echoes in here. “Did any of us tell you to stop?”

“You weren’t _allow-wed_ to say stop.”

“Fine, then, taintmunch, did any of us safeword out?”

You swallow hard. “I did.”

“And I’m sorry, by the way,” Dave ever-so-helpfully chimes in. “Shoulda remembered trolls aren’t so into assplay.”

“Please, be _more_ disgusting,” you tell him sarcastically, dragging the towel over your face. It’s easier for you to catch your breath when it’s damp around you. Plus this way, you don’t have to look at anyone. “Fuck, I’m so fuckin’—fuck—I’m so fucked up.”

“Not more than me.” Dave. “I like getting hit, what kind of a kinky fuck likes that shit?”

“My kinky fuck,” John tells him affectionately, and you can actually hear the wet kiss he smears into Dave’s hair.

You want that. You’re scared you’ll overheat again. You’re afraid of their hands on your skin, their mouths and their words. But more than that, you’re afraid of being on your own. “Go—do w-waterev-ver you do after you pail. Just leav-ve me alone.”

“Okay, listen, bulgemaster general.” Only one particularly ornery troll could be attempting to marshal your spirits like this. “I’m eighty percent sure that’s not what you want, and I’m a hundred and ten percent sure that’s not what you need. Wade your sorry ass out of the water and come pile with us. We’re watching Titanic.”

“We’re not watching Titanic,” Dave argues with him.

“Are you kidding me?” Kar directs the blast of his anger volcano. “That movie is replete with human romantic ideals. Not that your stupid fucking species understands the nuances of quadrants, or has the thinking capacity to do so. Plus, it’s got water. Lots of water. _Cold_ water. And he likes water.”

“Fuck,” you mumble to your towel. “You—you really pile after pailing?” There’s kinky, and then there’s _kinky_.

“On the couch,” John reassures you. “Watching a movie. I don’t think it’s actually that diamond-y thing? There’s just a lot of tea and Gatorade and chocolate and popcorn and Karkat yelling at the TV and Dave falling asleep mid-sentence.”

“I only did that _once_ ,” Dave hastily corrects him.

“I don’t w-want tea,” is the next thing you say. Everything gets quiet. Like they’re actually listening to you. Like they actually want to hear what you have to say. “Something cold,” you explain. “My v-vascular is all dysregulated. And if I have to sit next to you chumbuckets for too long, I don’t know-w if it w-will ev-ver go back to normal.”

“I put the jawsnapbeast juice in the food locker when I got the freeze pellets,” Kar offers you. Every time he uses the Alternian term for something, there’s a buzz in his voice you could swear you feel in your skin, an offer of comfort, a reminder of home.

But this isn’t home. This is someone else’s apartment and you are naked in someone else’s bathroom after you had sex with someone else’s boyfriends and then the someone else. “Maybe I should just go hiv-ve.” You curl into yourself even harder, like that could somehow hide your retracted genitals from the view of the three people who were touching them so recently.

“You don’t have to go,” John says. “I mean, if you don’t want to. I would feel better if you stuck around for a little bit.”

Your earfins prick up. “You’re just sayin’ that.”

Kar sits down on the side of the tub and gently rubs the towel against your hair. It massages at the base of your horns; your throat closes and a contented hum comes out. “C’mon, douchefin, we want you to stay. We have clothes for you and everything. If you want to sleep on my slat, I can take the couch. Just—don’t walk out the door yet, you disaster on legs, you look fucked.”

“Good,” you croak, “because that’s how I feel.” Kar drags the cloth over you more purposefully; you start to unfurl, gradually. You feel cold again, finally. And sore all over. Your head hurts and your skin feels too dry. When you try to sit up, it feels like someone stabbed you between the legs. “Fuck,” you hiss out, moving gingerly to avoid the worst of it. “I can’t believ-ve I fuckin’ did that.” How was it physically possible you crammed so much into your useless nook.

“I know, right, it was awesome.” Dave throws more cloth at you.

Sweatpants and a tee-shirt. The logo says something about beach reconstitution. It’s not too tight—must be John’s, you’re about the same size—but it still flattens your gills again. You have to remember not to snag your horns on it as it goes over your head, but by the time you come out the other end of the collar and turn to say thank you, John’s already gone. So is Kar. You put the sweatpants on instead of expressing any gratitude.

A useless filler syllable comes out of your mouth, because you’re still fuckdazed but you can’t let this silence sit for too long. Dave hands you your glasses. Your fingertips touch. His nail varnish is chipped. “Oh,” you realize. “Sorry.”

“Nah,” he brushes it off. “We’ll fix it later.”

“The royal w-we?”

“No, me and the gremlin that lives in my ass.” Just as you’re covering your eyes, he slips his shades into his hand. “Come on, you don’t want to miss the beginning of the movie, do you?”

You mean to say _yes_. “Are we still friends?” comes out instead.

His shades were almost on. Almost. So close. “Yeah,” he says easily, “are we not supposed to be?”

You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. When he reaches down to lend you a hand, you take his wrist and let his fingers slip down to your pulse point as you leverage your way out of the bath. And by the time you reach the living room, everyone is drifting happily, solidly at sea.


End file.
